even more.
The reality was that without me learning Gio, I would never be able to communicate with some of the market ladies, so with a little convincing from my friend Mary and others like Tom Jackson, my attempt to learn the Gio dialect was launched. Loving a challenge and having a great desire to communicate effectively with the town women, I stuck with it.
After about six months of studying and practicing short, simple phrases, I went into the Wednesday market. A little timidly, I meandered around and started greeting the women in their own language, carrying on limited conversations with some of them. The fervor grew when the news that the white woman was speaking their language, and within minutes, some of the market women had put the “fat” white missionary lady on their shoulders and began to dance around the market. The celebratory dance was their way of showing gratitude for my efforts in learning to talk with them in their own dialect. That day remains a highlight of my entire African ministry!
At the following annual Mano/Gio conference in January 1987, I was slated to teach a Bible class to the older women. The first day I surprised the ladies by reading all my scriptures from my very own Gio New Testament, giving all my scripture references in Gio. So thankful was I that God had allowed me to learn some of the language of those around us! I prayed, too, for the ability to love them just as He loved them. Speaking their language without loving them deeply in my heart....well, surely that would be way too brassy!
CHAPTER FOUR
Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on you. —L. Thomas Holdcroft
Full House
No matter how long we ministered in West Africa, I never really became totally accustomed with the constant presence of someone other than family in our house. Granted, they were helping me with the never-ending household duties that seemed so much more arduous than what I ever had in the States. As I’ve mentioned before, there was no glass in the windows, only screen and “rogue bars” (metal crisscross bars to keep thieves from cutting the screen and climbing into the windows). So you can only imagine that dust was a minute by minute accumulation. Despite my discomfort with house help, it was necessary if I was going to be effective in ministry; however, it was still very difficult for me to share my private domain. My journal, after only a couple of days with house help reiterated that:
I am still having a hard time getting use to people in my house working. But I am so thankful we have two good young African men that we can trust. I have to remember that they appreciate their jobs as much as we appreciate their work. Our youngest worker asked us to keep his pay for a couple of months and buy him some new athletic shoes in Monrovia.
Two things compelled me to keep using house help throughout our African missionary career: I knew that it provided much-needed income to Bible school families, plus I recognized that I could not possibly scrub concrete floors, dust and mop a house where the screen windows seem to beckon the dust, haul water from an outside well, build a fire and boil water, and wash clothes in tubs if I was going to keep up with the care of my family and do any ministry at all. No matter what my American upbringing may have been telling me, I had to learn to live with the phenomenon of house help. The cultural collisions had begun.
Today we have a college ministry at the University of North Carolina @ Charlotte, and I do not have house help. Believe me, there are now times when I pine away for those days when I would come in from the African market or from teaching English at the Bible Institute, and the floors would be freshly mopped, savory food set on the stove, and the bathrooms cleaned to the max. Ministry with college students is extremely demanding and time-consuming, but the domestic conveniences in our American homes make it easier to keep up. Still after all those years in Africa with someone doing it for me, cleaning is not one of my favorite things to do. I admit it–I simply got spoiled. Again, cultural collisions pursue me!
It also dawned on me that having these African young people in our homes gave us the awesome opportunity and responsibility to teach them by our example. You know how it is: we can often live like we want to be perceived while out in public, waiting until we are in the privacy of our own homes to be who we truly are. Not so out there since our home was accessed by some of the very people to whom we came to minister. That reality brought all that to light! In many ways, it was a good exercise in living out our faith–off the cuff–not rehearsed–and in front of a perpetual audience!
Molly Maid, Jungle Style
About ten days after we arrived in Tappi and after indulging in the generous meals offered by fellow missionaries, I began cooking on a charcoal grill outside the back of our house. It was also the day that one of the Bible school guys started working with us. Paul, a well-trained Liberian, who had worked with another missionary family for several years, washed clothes in a tub outside for almost the entire day! I kept watching him through the window and thanking God that it was not me doing it, though there was also a part of me that felt guilty to realize someone else was doing the work I should be doing. I could never get over the fact that another person was waiting on me in the domestic realm that had previously been solely my responsibility. My Americanness never quite knew what to do with that reality!
Then there was the communication gap. One of the first lessons in relating verbally with someone from another culture is to never assume you are completely understood and to be very specific with instructions, using phrases from their cultural vernacular if possible. Paul, who I have already noted was helping us that first year we lived in Tappi, was a life saver. He taught me so much, he laughed with me about my ignorance of the West African ways, and was patient in showing me how to cook African chop (food) and how to use ingredients easily procured in that region. I felt like a wealthy woman who could afford to have a full-time chef in her kitchen, freeing me up to spend more time with Michelle, as she, too, adjusted to our new world.
One day it was my turn to laugh at Paul, although the laughter was initially hard to come by. If you remember, I said earlier that we always tried to buy enough food and staples to last at least six weeks. For that reason, we bought white and brown sugar and flour each in twenty-five pound bags. Before leaving the States, I had been given some extra large Tupperware containers that were perfect for storing the sugars and flour, since we had been told ahead of time that the ants and bugs would find their way into our food items that were not canned or well sealed.
Our mission plane had just arrived with a large quantity of food for all the missionaries. As became a tradition, either Jeff or I would roll our wheelbarrow to the airplane hangar where the men were divvying up the groceries for each family. It was an easy way to haul a large amount of groceries to the house, and also was not unusual to see Michelle riding on top of the mound of groceries down the hill from the hangar. Yes, it was indeed an exciting time for us when groceries arrived! Seriously, it was. Just imagine being cocooned 180 miles from civilization and then someone would bring you the food you needed. It was as good as a food drop!
As Paul and I were putting the groceries in the pantry, I was called away for some reason, so I quickly instructed him to put the large bags of white sugar, the brown sugar, and flour into the three containers that I had set on the kitchen counter. Simple instructions? I thought so, too. A couple of hours later, I came into the kitchen to begin supper preparations. Paul had already left for the day, so thankfully he was not there for my reaction to his detailed artwork with the sugars and flour.
Setting on the counter were the three plastic containers filled with the sugars and flour. Nice, right? Well, the one small detail that floored me was how he had painstakingly layered all three into each container: white flour, brown sugar, white sugar, brown sugar, white flour, and so on. All three containers were perfectly melded into that particular formula. I snapped. I cried. I called for Jeff. (What was he going to do about it, I didn’t know, but it made me feel better to know I could call him) As I recall, it had been a rather demanding
